


Scenes from the Life of a Metal Crafter

by fluffernutter8



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are people in the world outside the characters of the Buffyverse. Sometimes their paths do cross.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes from the Life of a Metal Crafter

I remember the first day I went to the shop. My grandfather Daniel (Poppy, I called him) was a silversmith. His brother, my great-uncle Paul, was a goldsmith and their younger brother Dave ran the business. The sign outside said Deerborn Bros. I was terribly excited because, at five, I had just learned to read my name and there it was on a real sign that everyone could see.

I swung Poppy and my joined hands as we walked briskly down the main street on that November Saturday. A little bell tinkled as we entered the shop, which I thought was magical. I looked into the case while Poppy talked to Uncle Dave. I was entranced by the sparkle of the different metals. I went to open the case, but then pouted as I saw the lock. I was in the midst of planning on how to get the key off of Uncle Dave's belt when Poppy took my hand and ushered me back into the workshop.

“This is the part that nobody sees,” he told me quietly, tying on a thick smith's apron, “They say a ring is the wrong size and Dave takes it back here and then it comes out- magic!- the right size. They don't see the forge or the metal or the bench.”

The whole place smelled of polish and fire and making things. It was so hot that I finally understood why Poppy had told me to wear a short-sleeved shirt under my bulky winter sweater.

Poppy gave me a special stool and workbench and a pile of metals. He told me to sort the gold from the silver. I felt important to have such a job: my friend Donna's elegant mother said that gold was very special and cost a lot of money. I liked silver better, though, because of the way it caught the light so I could make dots on the ceiling. Late in the afternoon when he was done with work, Poppy made me a cup of raspberry tea with lots of sugar.

As I grew older, Poppy and Uncle Paul started to teach me how to smith. I remember the first time I burned myself; I still have the scar on my pinkie finger. But I loved the way the metal could mold itself around a stick or pebble that I brought in. And we always drank raspberry tea at the end of the day.

I came back to the shop every weekend until I was eleven or twelve. After that I preferred to play with my friends or go to a ten-cent matinee. When I was fourteen, Poppy died. My heart was heavy with guilt at the funeral, recalling the hurt in his eager face and kind blue eyes as he came to pick me up the first Saturday I decided that I had better things to do than go to the shop with him.

Uncle Dave died when I was nineteen. I didn't go to the funeral, but the insult was ignored in favor of a larger family row. Uncle Dave's daughter, Lucy, was trying to convince Uncle Paul to sell the shop and retire. He refused. I was at college in Paris at the time, but I felt the shockwaves across the ocean. My mother, whose profession as an acerbic newspaper columnist was apparent in her letters to me, reported that Lucy had caused a big stir by lining up interested buyers without Paul's consent. He had thrown the situation right back at her by slamming the door in their faces enough times that offers slowed to the occasional tentative letter. My cousin Bella and I watched from the sidelines, rolling our eyes at how vindictive the older generation was. I stayed unbiased until a coincidence brought me back to the metal.

I needed to take an art class for credit and had planned on taking photography until I heard that Richard Thomas, the boy I had a crush on, was taking pottery. After taking the time to gush about how sensitive and artistic Rich was, I rushed out to sign up for the pottery elective. I arrived at the first session wearing an outfit that, while stylish, was completely inappropriate for working with clay. I wasn't too worried about that, though, because I had brought a small clay pot in my pocket to pass off as my own creation so I wouldn't have to actually work with the wheel and get messy. The plan had some terrible flaws: how was I supposed to get the clay off the wheel without anyone noticing, where would I put it once I did and did I really think no one would notice that my pot was hard before it had been fired? But in the end none of that mattered because as soon as I touched the clay and tentatively pressed the pedal to turn the wheel, I was transported back to Poppy's shop. The clay was different from metal, but the feeling of usefulness and creation was the same. My outfit ended up completely ruined, but I felt passionate again. I felt really full of energy. I might have channeled it into pottery if it weren't for another coincidence. As I was leaving class on the first day, I ran into the a boy who looked to be a few years older than myself. He was too young to be the professor, but I had seen him helping out some of the students. I would have said he was the TA, but the class was too small to warrant one.

I literally backed into him on my way out of class. As he helped me pick up my books, my bracelet caught his eye.

“Where did you get this?” His voice was slightly breathless, as if he was tapped into the passion that I was feeling.

I looked down at the bracelet, an intricate binding of Celtic knots that Poppy had given me. “My grandfather made it for me. He was a silversmith,” I told him truthfully.

His eyes lit up and he spoke earnestly, stumbling over his words. “He made it?! It's excellent, a true old-style metal masterpiece. He must have been very talented. People usually don't pay attention to metal work- they're more interested in jewels- but I've studied the subject a little and this makes fabulous use of some of the techniques I've read about.”

His enthusiasm caught me, and I found myself telling him that I had been taught a little smithing, learning that his name was Jason and accepting an invitation to the university metal shop to show him some things.

Later I would tell friends that I fell for Jason when he ran across campus through the heaviest rain in ten years to come show me the first necklace he had made by himself. It's a true story, but privately I think that I fell for Jason when he convinced me to buy Uncle Paul's shop.

“Helen, you have to buy it,” he told me, the conviction in his voice arrowing into my chest, “The shop is yours, don't you see? Your grandfather trained you in metal working and you're _good_ at it. The shop was meant for you.”

So as soon as I graduated I flew back to California and went to see Uncle Paul. His eyes were old, so old that the magnifier that he worked with barely allowed him to see my face. He crafted the metal by feel and gut by then and kept the shop open by selling the things he made through catalogs instead of scaring people with his gruff manner over the counter. I sat with him and drank a cup of raspberry tea, the ritual reminding me of Poppy, and asked if I could inherit the shop.

Uncle Paul was always the crotchety one, not like Uncle Dave who gave peppermint drops to me and my cousins or Poppy whose eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Uncle Paul was always the one who yelled at the kids to be quiet at family gatherings or scolded someone for eating too much. But as he looked at me that day, I saw Poppy's eyes in his leathery face.

“I've been waiting for you to ask,” he told me gently. I knew it was true when he passed away the very next month and left me the shop in his will.

I thank goodness that I chose a business degree, something that wasn't common for women in those days, because without the knowledge of management, the shop might have failed from the moment I took over. As it was, it was hard at first, running the shop as well as making the products. Then Jason came over from Paris, having finished his graduate degree. He had come to catch up on the best friendship that we had formed in my last year at university, but he left as my first employee. I had trained him, so I knew that he could work metal, and I knew that he was good with people. Jason was a wise investment. The store ran smoothly, the two of us each doing equal amounts of work backstage and behind the counter.

Jason proposed to me in the workshop on a rainy Saturday six months after I hired him. I was sitting on the same workbench where I had once sorted pieces of gold and silver. He proposed with a ring that he had snuck into the shop late at night to make. I cried and thought of how the workshop still smelled like polish and fire and making things and how I could see Poppy smiling his crinkle-eyed smile while he toasted our engagement with a cup of raspberry tea.

We continued running the shop together. I saw all manner of interesting people and heard many interesting requests: a man there wondering if we could carve a design into a dagger for his mother, a child no older than ten asking if it was possible to shape silver into tiny loaves of bread. Every day was an adventure, but still homey at the same time with just me and Jason and the familiar scents of the shop.

Jason and I had been married for twenty years when we found out that he had some sort of tumor in his brain that had been sitting quietly for years and suddenly started growing. He was dead within a month. I was totally gutted. Some mornings I would wake up and expect the two sides of my chest to be open like the pages of a book. The only thing that got me through was my cousin Bella. She had lost her husband Andrew young to a heart attack, so she knew what I was going through. She would sit patiently while I cried, drive me to the shop when my eyes were too swollen from tears to do it myself, sit beside me sewing calmly as I worked the metal by touch and afterwards brew me the perfect cup of raspberry tea. Bella got me through until finally I could open up the shop without Jason's ghost stabbing me every time I walked through the door.

I woke up one morning in November feeling vaguely peculiar. I realized that it had been sixty years since Poppy had first brought me to the shop and I felt as if something special was going to happen, almost a commemoration of the day that had changed my life.

I had excellent business all day- people buying picture frames and watches to give as holiday gifts- but it was almost closing time before I saw anyone really peculiar. Darkness had fallen outside and I didn't see the figure until the bell tinkled as he entered the shop. A very handsome young man came in, no older that thirty, but with the oldest eyes I had ever seen. It was almost as if his eyes were separated from his body and looking at me from the bottom of a well. But it wasn't just their age that haunted me, it was the level of grief in them. It reminded me of how I felt when Jason had died six years earlier, but it seemed as if my pain were an embarrassment to his, as if the obviousness of his feeling drowned out everything else, as if he was hurting more that I ever would.

“Can I help you?” I asked, surprised that my voice stayed so steady.

“Yes,” he said, his voice gruff as if he had been crying for a long time, “I would like to buy that ring.” He pointed to a beautiful engagement ring: bands of gold and silver twisted together so tightly that you couldn't tell where one left off and the other began. It did not surprise me that he would think it beautiful, because it was. What made me pause was the fact that he didn't even look at the selection, as if he already knew what he wanted. But I shrugged, ready to make the sale and go home.

“Can you put an inscription on it?” He asked, his voice having an angle of urgent hysteria to it.

“Sure I can,” I said, making my voice as calm as possible, trying to soothe him, “What would you like it to say?”

“Can you write,” he paused, thinking of something, “Semper memor, nunquam alieno?” He wrote it down on a slip of paper for me, before I could tell him that I already knew how to spell it and even what it meant: “always remember, never forget”. I made out a claim card with the date that he could pick the ring up and rang up the sale.

As the young man walked into the darkness, his long leather coat creating a cape-like effect, I wondered about him. What had happened to make him look so ancient and sad? Who was the ring for? And what did he want them to never forget?

I shrugged and went to lock up. The sales for the day had been excellent, but that was to be expected. It was Black Friday, after all, and as far as shopkeepers are concerned, that's the perfect day. 

**Author's Note:**

> The technical A/N: I haven't a clue about metal craft. I just kinda made it up. Don't freak out if I got it wrong. I also did not learn Latin in order to write this fic. I used an online translator. Forgive me for any mistakes in that as well.
> 
> The fangirl A/N: I promised [](http://perpetual.livejournal.com/profile)[**perpetual**](http://perpetual.livejournal.com/) a fic for the prompt B/A, silver. This is not the one that I will end up writing for her, but since it's been approximately forever since she requested the fic, I thought I would give her this, which has been sitting on my computer forever and vaguely fits the criteria. This is the weirdest thing I have ever written. It's basically an original fiction, but with fanfic-y ties. I hope you like it anyway.
> 
> The explanation A/N: That was weird, I know. It leaves a lot to the imagination, but here's what I wanted to convey: on the perfect day, the Day That Wasn't (Black Friday '99, if you'll recall, IWRY if you need further reminder) Angel (the handsome young man) went and bought the ring from the shop, planning on getting proposing to Buffy. That probably took place between the time Doyle says the stuff about “that depends on what you want” and the B/A kiss on the pier. But since that version of the day was erased, he went to buy the same ring again later at night, even though he couldn't be engaged to Buffy now. The idea in its most basic form came from [an IWRY marathon story from 2008](http://www.octavesoftheheart.com/iwry/iwry08_14.htm). It was by [](http://thenyxie.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://thenyxie.livejournal.com/)**thenyxie** and it takes place post-series, but it has a part where Angel sends Buffy a ring that he accompanies with a letter that says “I bought this for you on a day that never happened…” That got me thinking and here are the results.


End file.
